More Easy Answers

So, yeah. Easy answers. Achievement without effort. This desire for maximum output with minimum input is hard-wired into us. Being able to figure out the simplest way to achieve one's goals is a survival mechanism. But sometime's evolutionary traits can backfire. Especially when one lives within a self-reinforcing protective bubble of information.

The climate change deniers, the anti-vaxxers, right-wing troglodytes, Hillary-bots, partisans of all stripes, hive off into their little communities of self-adulation and self-praise and become so enamored of the endless stream of mental rewards they dole out to one another that they become disconnected from reality.

And when the deluded praise supplants the actual achievements, they don't even notice how insane they're acting. Personally, I'm of the opinion that Justin Trudeau is probably not a bad guy. I'm sure he's somewhat arrogant due to the prestige of his father's name and due to his own astonishingly good looks. Combine this with what appears to be a definite mental shallowness and I'm also sure that he's not an individual I'd ordinarily seek out for his company. (He'll live, I'm sure.) But overall, he's probably a fairly agreeable chap.

So why is he pushing these bitumen pipelines and running roughshod over promises (very important promises) to the First Nations? Why is he continuing with stephen harper's Orwellian surveillance legislation? Why is he so prepared to be a neo-liberal thug in so many areas (albeit while wiping a tear from his liberal eye)?

Probably because he has immersed himself in the bubble of delusion that is the Liberal Party of Canada.

Think about it. He spends all day either very busy reading reports made by like-minded researchers, or speaking with like-minded partisans. And much of his workplace discussion focuses on convincing a conservative, corporatist media on the soundness of Liberal approaches to ideas and policies. He has neither the time, nor the inclination, nor the incentive to genuinely consider and interact with contrary sources of opinion.

And, when he suffers cognitive dissonance from encountering new facts that are unexplainable by his Liberal worldview, he simply stops thinking about them. And, of course, this process works for previously accepted knowledge that no longer fits with his present Liberal world-view bubble. This explains his ability to have had sincere, fruitful discussions with David Suzuki about the dangers of Climate Change and what is necessary to counteract these grave dangers, and then, following his attaining power, to simply stop talking to Suzuki. Upon gaining power, Trudeau and the Liberals immediately embraced "pragmatism," or, balancing the "needs" of the psychopaths in Calgary and Toronto's Bay Street with those of the environment and the human race.

This has to be done of course because there's a competing political party that's vying for power: The morons and troglodytes and sleazy con-artists and religious freaks and pathetic closet-cases who comprise the Conservative Party of Canada. These shit-heads deny the reality of climate change and make no pretense of serving anyone other than the capitalist elite. (That's not exactly true. They DO gratify their voting base with policies of discrimination and racism and other forms of bigotry towards scapegoats and the weak. The low-functioning level of their voting base is such as to be easily requited with the abuse of "the other" even as their own lives continue to deteriorate as a result of the main thrust of their own party's policies.)

So it is with Trudeau's false promises to the First Nations. Whatever he wants to think, Trudeau remains part of an imperialist-colonialist project of genocide against the First Nations. Their precedence on these lands, and their existing claims on rights and resources are a hindrance to the capitalist project of exploitation and so they are to be eliminated. Canada did not have the power to simply massacre them all at once and so has settled for long-term "low-intensity-conflict" wherein we destroy their languages and cultures and deprive them of services and resources (while forbidding them from accessing their own resources) and, when necessary, we break solemn promises to them while continuing to deny them the resources they surrendered and the actions they had taken, in return for those promises.

And Trudeau justifies all of this behaviour with standard Liberal platitudes, and he is able to do this because he exists within a bubble of self-reinforcing Liberal platitudes. That's how he and his witless Environment Minister can pose in super-hero costumes as "Climate Superheroes" while they continue to suck dirty tar out of the ground to give to the Chinese to burn. It's how Trudeau can continue to give heartfelt apologies to past crimes against the First Nations while continuing to inflict new ones upon them and pretending that the vast majority of the First Nations do not now hate his guts and despise the sound of his voice.

Because he's surrounded himself with a bubble of stupid Liberals and stupid Liberal platitudes. All day, every day, he's immersed in a soothing bath of "We make sure that every Canadian has a chance to reach their fullest potential" and "Politics is the art of the possible and we are the ultimate in what is possible" and "We represent ALL Canadians, rich and poor, all creeds and colours."

How to conclude this little shpiel? I don't know. Break that bubble. But how? I've sent my own Liberal MP some e-mails but I can't even be sure that he reads them.